


Sweet Rewards

by angel_vixen



Series: I'll Have What She's Having [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_vixen/pseuds/angel_vixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy rewards those who help her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Rewards

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: cookie dough. Gelsey said "bribing...with cookies?" This isn't _quite_ what she had in mind, I think. A tip of the hat to Triskellion for the beta-help.

Strange things are always happening at SHIELD. It is, after all, an agency that deals with everything from mutated caterpillars lunching on everything green in Central Park to aliens in Times Square during rush hour.

And that's just outside the building. Inside, there is a dizzying mishmash of scientists who do everything from weapons-development to literal rocket science (but Steve doesn't focus a lot on any of that; it makes his brain spin). There are technicians who do maintenance on machines far more advanced than anything he saw Erskine or Howard use. There are agents who go all over the world at a moment's notice, and the support staff who get them there. SHIELD headquarters is like a small city in its own right, and Steve knows he will never see everything (and not just because he hasn't got a high enough clearance for some of it) that goes on here.

So it isn't weird to him when, on a Friday, he steps out of the elevator to begin his way to Bruce's lab, and there's Darcy, under a vent sixty or seventy paces away, settling the back of a chair to the hallway wall. A bit surprising, yes, because there isn't anything around her to suggest why she's there. But it doesn't particularly throw him, either.

He starts towards her, and tilts his head. She looks...determined. Steve chances a look up, and feels his forehead furrow a bit.  
Nothing up there either. Okay. Now they're entering "vaguely strange" territory. Last he checked, she was very faintly claustrophobic, and with nothing to guide him on this one, he's wondering if she's seriously planning to get herself into the vents or something. And he's drawing a blank on why she would, in the first place. Steve tilts his head to the other side, stopping a few steps away from her, and makes a gentle sound in his throat so he can get her attention without startling her.

"Hiding from someone?" He smiles as she turns to him. "Or are you going out for the next round of agent recruitment?"

"Funny, Rogers." Darcy tips up one corner of her lips, and smirks lightly at him. He can hear her feet tapping a rhythm gently on the floor, though he doesn't know what song it might be, and he's glad, because it means she's in a good mood. It's been a rough couple of days for her, and he's been at a loss how to help. "Here,” she continues. “Since you're here, make yourself useful for a moment." Before he can say anything to that (he's plenty useful, thank you), she bends over to pull something up from the far side of her chair, and hand it to him to hold.

Steve doesn't catch himself in time to keep his eyebrows from shooting up at the bright purple, plastic plate she gives him. "Cookies?" He looks back up, watching her step up onto the chair-seat, utterly baffled. Also, that is a _really_ nice skirt she's wearing, and he raises his eyes up the line of her back, attempting to distract himself with how she's...

Now, wait a moment. Full stop, there, Rogers. Focus. Hands full of the unexplained plate of cookies, he watches her put her fingertips to a ceiling panel, gently coax it out of place, and slip it aside. Well, apparently she _is_ going up. He takes a step closer, and hums in curiosity.

"So...what, you're going up to hide in the vents and eat cookies?" Her snort of amusement does nothing to enlighten him. Steve shrugs slightly as she looks over her shoulder at him. "Well, it's not like there are that many places in this building where you can do something by yourself. I mean, if you're doing it just so you don't have to share with anyone, especially when Tony's got some kooky sort of cookie-radar..." He stops when she giggles, then groans. "Uh. Sorry. Pun unintended."

"It's fine." Darcy leans a bit, and twists, and Steve resolutely keeps his eyes from dropping to the neckline of the pretty blouse she's got on today. She smiles a bit naughtily, taking the plate from him, and straightens back up. "I'm leaving a present for the bow-man."

Steve blinks, wondering how Clint got into this, and watches her shift very, very carefully onto her tiptoes. He moves instinctively to spot her, and pulls his lip between his teeth without thinking. "...okay?"

"Well..." Darcy raises the plate up over the lip of the opening, and feels her way with it until she's obviously satisfied with where it's settled. "I wanted to thank him for helping me the other day..." She fiddles her fingers under the piece of ceiling-tile, getting it back into place. "And I figured cookies would be a nice way to do it." Bending a bit to let herself down, she rocks back, and lands easily. When she turns and gets a good look at his face, she grins widely. Full-on Cheshire cat, as a matter of fact. It doesn't lessen his curiosity, truth be told. In fact, it makes him just a little bit nervous.

Steve wonders for half-a-second if it's a real "thank you," or a joke. Then he remembers who this is, and decides it's legitimate. But he's still in the dark.

Darcy swivels to grab at the chair. "You remember Robinson?"

Why, yes, he _does_ remember Robinson, and not with any sort of fondness. It had been just yesterday, in fact, while they'd been making dinner that Darcy'd been making jokes again about how it'd been her luck to get stuck in an elevator during a power outage last week (which Thor still swore was an accident) with a random co-worker she'd never met before, and come out of it thirty-five minutes later with the guy utterly besotted with her. And so far, nothing she's done has been able to shake Robinson's habit of trailing behind her with a moony expression. Steve knows her amusement has faded into annoyance long before now. He tries to resist the tightening he can feel in his jaw, telling himself that Darcy has proven time and again that she can take care of herself. She's had hangers-on before; they just...weren't this persistent. At all. Steve's not particularly inclined to feel any sympathy for him, despite the fact that at least the man has good taste in women.

Far more inclined to do a jig on his body, Steve thinks darkly to himself, then reins that in too. Coulson may have a soft spot for Captain America, but Steve knows something like that won't slide. Even if it'd be really satisfying. Like... _really_ satisfying.

"So, what does Clint have to do with Robinson?" He takes the chair from her, despite her protests, and hefts it a little higher. As he follows her back into the meeting room where she seems to have gotten it, she looks over her shoulder.

And for all the world, looks precisely like the cat who ate the canary.

"He noticed my...little predicament." When Steve simply waits in questioning silence, putting the chair back into place, she smirks a bit wider. "You know those toy guns with the squishy darts Tony brought to the last debriefing?"

Steve has no idea how he could forget. Agent Hill _still_ isn't speaking to Clint _or_ Tony. "The Nerf ones?" He thinks that's the right name.

"Yes. The Nerf ones." Darcy's grin widens even more. "Clint's been trailing him since Wednesday, and every time he starts getting out of line..."

Putting two and two together, Steve's face crumples as he begins to laugh, bending forward and trying not to howl. Oh, God, that's too _rich_. Far more satisfying for her, he knows, than repeating “no” and “No, really, I'm not interested” a thousand times a day.

Darcy cackles in a way that sets him off even more. "He'll just pop out of the ceiling, and **BOOM!** Sucker's got a "KICK ME" sign on his back, or a dart right in the middle of his forehead, or..."

Steve waves limply, and she stops, letting him collect himself. Well, since nothing else she'd tried had worked, he supposes this is as good as any other way. And Darcy is practically vibrating with glee. There is a lot he will let slide to see her smile like that, he thinks, and beams back at her when she catches his eye.

As she flicks off the light and they walk out into the hall again, he curls an arm smoothly around her waist and pulls her close to his side. "So, if I help you in the future, can I get cookies too?"

His stomach flips a little at how her eyes slide sideways under her lashes to glint at him. "I think you can get something better than cookies."


End file.
